Oct

24

Drudge: Internal TNR Documents Leads to Beauchamp Story Collapse; TNR Search: No Results?

by Stephan Tawney | 1:35 pm 

UPDATE: Strange. A search of TNR & its blogs returns absolutely no results for “scott thomas”, “beauchamp”, “shock troops”, “baghdad diarist”, etc. That comes from at least 2 other lizards, one Hot Air commentator, as well as myself. Anyone seeing the posts? Google’s cache clearly shows that the posts existed and, obviously, contained those terms.

Is it just their site redesign, or what? (UPDATED)

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beauchamp1 Drudge: Internal TNR Documents Leads to Beauchamp Story Collapse; <font color=red>TNR Search: No Results?</font>

Drudge has obtained internal documents for The New Republic, and writes:

The DRUDGE REPORT has optained internal documents from the investigation of THE NEW REPUBLIC’S “Baghdad Diarist”, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private turned war correspondent who reported tales of military malfeasance from the Iraq War front.

The documents appear to expose that once the veracity of Beauchamp’s diaries were called into question, and an Army investigation ensued, THE NEW REPUBLIC has failed to publicly account for publishing slanderous falsehoods about the U.S. military in a time of war.

The first document:

The DRUDGE REPORT has since obtained the transcript of a September 7 call between TNR editor Frank Foer, TNR executive editor Peter Scoblic, and Private Beauchamp. During the call, Beauchamp declines to stand by his stories, telling his editors that “I just want it to end. I’m not going to talk to anyone about anything really.” The editors respond that “we just can’t, in good conscience, continue to defend the piece” without an explanation, but Beauchamp responds only that he “doesn’t care what the public thinks.” The editors then ask Beauchamp to cancel scheduled interviews with the WASHINGTON POST and NEWSWEEK.

As for the second document. Oh, you’re going to love this (if you’ve been following the story). No, really, you’ll love this:

The DRUDGE REPORT has also obtained a signed “Memorandum for Record” in which Beauchamp recants his stories and concedes the facts of the Army’s investigation — that his stories contained “gross exaggerations and inaccurate allegations of misconduct” by his fellow soldiers.

(Brennan falls out of chair, gasping) What?! You mean, Beauchamp did recant his stories?! I thought that was just a lie spread by wingnut Bushitlerites at the Weekly Standard. (Oy)

The third document obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT is the Army’s official report on the investigation into the allegations made by Private Beauchamp. The Army concluded that Beauchamp had “completely fabricated” the story of mocking a disfigured woman, that his description of a “Saddam-era dumping ground” was false, and that claims that he and his men had deliberately targeted dogs with their armored vehicles was “completely unfounded.” Further the report stated “that Private Beauchamp desired to use his experiences to enhance his writing and provide legitimacy to his work possibly becoming the next Hemingway.”

Of course, the blogosphere knew that on day one. Upon a search of his blog, we found he said he had joined up in order to put more weight behind his future work and statements, and to become a writer like he wanted to be.

The blogosphere already suspected or knew most of this. The only thing that really adds information (for me) is the exact transcript of the phone call (Doc. 1). The rest is really just, though significant, a validation of suspicions and leads. The other benefit of Drudge carrying this? To this day, TNR has failed to respond about their follow-up investigation. Kinda hard to hide this.

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